The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers_And Their Muses

by Terri-Lynne Defino

  “Dangerous?”

  “Yes, very dangerous. Passion is all impulse, and impulse is rarely rational.”

  Cecibel sipped. “I don’t know that I buy that.”

  “No?”

  “What about passionate love?”

  “Ah!” He thrust a finger in the air. “A wonderful thing, but not what we’re discussing.”

  “We’re not?”

  “No, we’re discussing the difference between love and passion, not a combination of the two. Let us take this copy of Dark Wings for example.” He hefted the book, fluttered the pages. Again. And again.

  The scent of old paper made soft with wear wafted into her face. Glue long-past cracked along the spine threatened to give way completely. An oft-read book, yes, but not a well-loved one. Cecibel’s heart thumped, measure for measure. Her skin prickled. Arms. Neck. Scalp. She steadied her breathing, succeeding only in making it stunted and obviously labored.

  “The critics were wrong about this book, Cecibel.” Alfonse spoke so softly. “It did not betray my fans. It fed them what they needed. Love it or hate it, people were passionate about it. You were passionate about it.” He handed her back the book, tapped the cover. “What does your copy of Wicked Tongues look like?”

  “Not like this, I swear.”

  “Because you love it. Cherish it. This one?” He shrugged. “The passion is in the creases. Why is this the book you brought for me to inscribe?”

  She tried for casual. “It was on my nightstand, and only the first of many I hope to have you sign.” And held her breath.

  Alfonse thumbed his lip. “It would be my honor to sign them all.”

  Cecibel exhaled, slow and softly.

  “Leave this with me,” he said, “Bring me the rest tomorrow. It will occupy my time until you visit me again, thinking up the perfect inscription for so lovely and indulgent a young woman.”

  Leave it? Her own hands placed the book upon the tea table, her own voice said, “Of course. Thank you,” from far, far away, where another voice was screaming. Always screaming. Years and years and years.

  “Let us talk of other things.” Alfonse Carducci’s hand upon her knee silenced the distant screaming. She focused on the long, straight fingers. Trimmed, pink nails. Wrinkled, yes, but the hand of a much younger man. He pulled it gently away. “Forgive me. I meant no offense.”

  “Pardon?”

  “My hand. Your knee. You were staring.”

  “Oh, no.” Cecibel managed to laugh without smiling. “I was . . . was just thinking that you have nice hands.”

  Alfonse held them out. “One of my few still-functioning body parts. A writer depends upon his hands. I have never been able to dictate more than notes. There is a magical, even sacred bond between my mind and my fingers.”

  “Mrs. Peppernell has said much the same.”

  “Olivia is of the old school.” He sipped his water. “I suspect most of the residents are.”

  “That will probably be so for some time. Do you know everyone here?”

  “Not everyone.” Another sip. “Olivia, of course. And Raymond. If one is older than sixty, which I imagine everyone here is, we’ve probably met or worked together.”

  “Our youngest resident is sixty-seven. Judith Arsenault. I believe she’s Canadian.”

  “Judi?” Far, far more romantic and lyrical when he said the name. “Yes, she is Canadian. A point of contention, back in our day. I didn’t know she is here. She was my editor many times. Brilliant. And so young to be locked away with the rest of us.”

  “Everyone is here for a reason,” she said, and no more. Judith could tell him what she wished, or nothing at all. “And no one is locked in anywhere.”

  “A figure of speech you will understand when you are as old and decrepit as I.”

  “Are you fishing for compliments?”

  “That depends.” His eyes twinkled when he smiled. They really did. “Are you offering any?”

  Cecibel watched him carefully while they chatted, for batting eyes or labored breathing. As one of his many caregivers, she knew his medical history, his medical facts. As one of his many fans, she knew a whole lot more. Alfonse was more interested in listening to her talk than he was in talking, possibly because breathing took enough effort without adding more.

  How he managed to steer the conversation away from himself and to her, Cecibel couldn’t figure out. Standing outside his suite an hour and some after she’d gone in, she pressed palms to burning cheeks. Had she chattered too inanely? Of course. She could scarcely remember anything she said, but what she did remember was about her. Coming to Bar Harbor, practically falling into the job she’d held for eight years. The patients met, loved, and lost. Her duties. What she loved. What she hated. Everything about her life on a superficial level, and nothing whatever of life before coming to the Pen.

  “Will you come back tomorrow?” he’d asked before she left. Cecibel agreed in a rush of breath, a dash for the door, and as graceless an exit as ever there had been.

  Chapter 3

  Bar Harbor, Maine

  May 22, 1999

  There are many yesterdays. With any luck, many tomorrows.

  But there’s only one today. Don’t fuck it up.

  —Cornelius Traegar

  Cecibel’s copy of Night Wings on the Moon sat where she’d left it upon the tea table, and still he hadn’t inscribed it. She’d brought him others that he easily found the right words for, but for this one? Words failed.

  It opened to one specific page every time he set it on its spine and let it do as it would. Someone had written in the margin—pencil, too faded to read—beside a bit of text.

  We fell free from on high, like dragons mating. We snapped and roared and bit. And we loved. The ground came at us. I saw it and didn’t care. She never saw it coming at all. I covered her eyes; if she saw, too, she’d have banked her great and powerful wings. I didn’t want to be saved, and so she couldn’t be either. Both, or none. I was content to fall.

  Alfonse tried and tried to remember writing those words, but couldn’t. It was like that. Writing. First rounds of revisions never failed to surprise and delight him. A book was always new, no matter how many years he’d worked on that first draft. Night Wings had taken six. Not his longest affair with a book, not his shortest. That he remembered. And the pain of all that honesty.

  Cecibel would arrive any moment, just as she had every day since that first. He picked up the tattered copy, flipped to the title page, set it down again. Instead, he opened the drawer of the table where there should have been teaspoons and cloth napkins, and retrieved from it the nearly blank notebook Cecibel had jotted his rambling into almost a week ago.

  She was, now, warm and lovely on his arm. An unfamiliar gift. A grief to come. Always and always, his . . .

  He picked up his pen.

  That was the deal. The pact. The promise written in kisses and on long walks. In screeched battles and hours of makeup sex. Cecilia and Aldo. Aldo and Cecilia. The stars had proclaimed it; either they or the storm clouds always so thick over Buffalo, New York . . .

  Buffalo? Alfonse shrugged. He’d been there, he was certain. At some point. Maybe. Underlining the city, he placed a question mark above it just as Cecibel knocked on his door.

  “Come in.” He placed the pen and notebook back into the drawer, closed it softly. In she came, as always, wearing a dress, the glory of her hair strategically covering half her face.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Carducci.”

  Still Mr. Carducci. “Good afternoon, Miss Bringer.”

  She frowned. Strange, how she would do that but remain stingy with her smiles.

  “What happened to Cecibel?” she asked.

  “I should not have been so forward,” he said. “That you call me Mr. Carducci leads me to believe you prefer formality. Thus, Miss Bringer, I shall not use your given name unless you do me the honor of using mine.”

  “I was taught to address my elders with respect.”


  He waved a hand over his head. Caught his breath. “An elder? I’m not certain my poor heart can take such reverence.”

  She dropped onto the chair set beside his. “Don’t say that. It’s not funny.”

  “Add humorless to the list of my shortcomings.” He patted her hand. “I think it is time you were forced to see the real me, my dear, not this image you have of me. I have never been respectable.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Then take me to the gathering room, and you will see.”

  Cecibel sat straighter. “You want to go to the gathering room? Now?”

  “I do. Now.”

  “Let me get a nurse.”

  “No, no.” He grabbed her hand as she started to rise. “You. Or I do not wish to go. I need you to protect me. I trust no one else here.”

  “Not Olivia?”

  “Who do you suppose I need protection from?”

  That made her laugh. Excellent. Even if she kept her lips together.

  “Unfortunately, I’m just an orderly. It’s against the rules.”

  “Rules?” When did his laughter start sounding like paper rustling? “Here? Ah, my dear, whatever has been since Cornelius’s death will be no more. He and I dreamed up this place when we were young men conquering the literary world. We took it from the greats. Faulkner, Joyce, Cather, Parker. We robbed them blind and flew their tattered flags in their faces. Cornelius is gone and now I am king. Look around you if you need proof. Will you refuse the king?”

  She leaned back in her chair, studied him with that one, marble-blue eye. What a beauty she had been, still was. Shame was the only ugliness he could see; but he was a writer, a weaver of words, and his reality was not hers.

  “I suppose not,” she said at last. “But if I get in trouble, I’m throwing you under the bus.”

  “Excellent. Thank you.” He started to rise, caught his breath, and made it the rest of the way to his feet. The wheelchair, state-of-the-art, sat unused in the corner. “I suppose being wheeled in by a goddess powering my chariot is not a terrible way to greet my subjects.”

  “It’s the chair or I’m getting a nurse. That’s the deal.”

  “I will not argue.” He gestured to it. “Would you?”

  Cecibel fetched the wheelchair that he could have powered on his own with nothing more than a little effort from his fingers. Still, he let her take control, folding his hands obediently in his lap while she maneuvered him out the door.

  “Tell me about my kingdom,” he said. “Dr. Kintz is a good man, sincerely invested in his patients, but he doesn’t have an artist’s soul.”

  “I don’t have an artist’s soul either,” she said. “I’m an orderly. A caregiver.”

  “That doesn’t mean there is no art in you, Cecibel. If that were true, you could not exist here. You would never have stayed.”

  “Then how will Dr. Kintz?”

  Alfonse glanced up at her over his shoulder. The buckled and pitted skin along her jawline nearly undid him. “See how long he endures,” he said, proud there wasn’t even a hitch in his voice. “As I understand it, there have been several head doctors since Cornelius’s death.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I didn’t get here until just after he died. I always wished I’d known him.”

  “He was an extraordinary man.”

  “Olivia tells me stories.” Cecibel leaned lower to whisper. “I’ve always believed it was Olivia scaring off all the doctors.”

  Alfonse chuckled. “I will not disagree, but if you tell her I said so, I’ll deny it.”

  “Good call.”

  She wheeled him silently, slowing closer to the gathering room. Alfonse attempted to control his breathing, trying vainly to keep his beleaguered heart from hammering. In the days he’d been in the Pen, there had been no need to step out of his suite. Olivia, Cecibel, his medication and food came to him. Too late to turn back. Alfonse Carducci never backed down. Schoolyards still bled his exploits, decades after he left Italy for the States. For a boy like him, it had been fight or fall.

  The halls and public rooms on the first floor looked much the same as they had when Cornelius first opened the place. Rich wood, gleaming granite, polished brass. The Pen had been built during the early 1920s by one of those haphazardly rich families who lost everything in the Crash. By the time he and Cornelius found the mansion, it had been left to rot.

  Nineteen forty-five was not kind to men of their ilk. Bar Harbor had been the perfect sort of obscure. Warm days swimming in the freezing sea. Cold nights burrowed warm in down quilts. Cornelius bought the mansion for a song, a dance, and a few pretty seashells. They spent four years restoring it, planning its future. Their future. And then Alfonse sold his first book, and everything changed.

  “You ready?” Cecibel’s voice startled his poor heart into beating uncomfortably fast. Her hand on his shoulder steadied him. Cornelius was gone. So were most of those the Pen was built for. Only he was left, barely. Olivia. Raymond. Judi—thank goodness, Judi. How fast the years flew by, and yet, their youth was eons ago.

  He covered her hand with his. “Do I look . . . old?”

  She bent low. “Yes, you do. And so do all the other residents here.” The spicy scent of her perfume excited him. “That’s why they call this an old people’s home.”

  * * *

  No cheer went up. Some tears were shed. Judi Arsenault. Switch. A few of the others who remembered Alfonse, though he did not remember them. Not Olivia, who’d been keeping Alfonse company whether he wished it or not. She’d scowled at Judi’s tears, taken the handles of the wheelchair, and rolled her old friend among his subjects. Alfonse didn’t object, though he did look back at Cecibel with a plea in his eyes.

  She made herself comfortable within hearing distance, and watched the king at his court. If anything happened to him, she was in trouble. While he was technically free to roam as he wished, unwritten law insisted that none of the residents were permitted to do so without authorization. This foray would never be authorized.

  Cecibel checked her watch. Fifteen minutes gone. Alfonse looked all right. Maybe a little pale, but he smiled that heart-pattering smile he’d been famous for. Olivia sat closest to him, her back to Cecibel and her hand resting lightly on Alfonse’s arm. Raymond Switcher, lined face lifted ten years in the past, sat on his left. Judi, still comparatively young and elfishly lovely, finished the circle at his knees. The gossip all over the tabloids years and years ago bloomed there in the intimacy of hands on his knees, in the ownership Olivia took, in the fact of the crown invisibly worn. Alfonse Carducci and Judith Arsenault. Alfonse Carducci and Olivia Peppernell. Alfonse Carducci and Cornelius Traegar. It wouldn’t surprise Cecibel to discover he’d also had a torrid affair with Switch despite the thousand stories Switch had for every picture of his Bethany gracing his room. But Switch was another storyteller in this place where such a thing was a given. For all Cecibel knew, there was never a Bethany to begin with.

  “You’re a brave one. Yes, you are.” Sal had a way of sneaking up on people, a true gift, considering his ample size.

  Cecibel pretended he hadn’t startled her, smoothed her hair over her face even though he’d seen it more times than she caught him. “I won’t let him stay long,” she said. “And I’m watching.”

  “If Dr. Dick catches you—”

  “Hush.” She shook her head. “You’re so bad.”

  “You know it, honey. The nurses will tattle, but I won’t. You can bet your skinny, white-girl ass Dr. Dick already knows. Probably on his way over right now.”

  “My ass isn’t skinny.”

  “Honey, please.” He turned around, brandishing the pride of the drag queen circuit. “This is an ass.”

  “You got me there.” She patted the chair beside her. “Dr. Kintz is having his dinner. He always eats early so he can make rounds before the residents settle in for the night. If the nurses tattle and he disapproves enough, he’ll come down and chastise me. If he’s o
kay with Alfonse being among his subjects, he’ll pretend he didn’t hear anything.”

  Sal raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow, pursed plump lips. “Your funeral, honey.”

  “You performing this weekend?”

  “Does a drag queen shit in the woods?”

  Cecibel nudged him. “Gross.”

  “You coming this time?”

  “Where?”

  “If I tell you, you won’t come.”

  Portland. Had to be. Cecibel crossed her arms over her chest. Uncrossed them. “You know we can’t both leave,” she said. “Who’d watch over the residents?”

  “Their nurses, maybe? Come on, honey. Road trip, just us girls.”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  Sal shrugged. “We both know that maybe means no. It always does.”

  Cecibel didn’t argue. He was right, of course. But he would ask again, another day, for another show, until she said yes.

  * * *

  “You’re looking a little blue around the gills, there, Alfie.” Switch circled a finger around his mouth. “You okay?”

  I’m dying, you fool. “I’m fine,” he said.

  “Maybe you should rest.” Judi fussed. Like a bird, she was. Always had been. He’d been almost afraid to make love to her that first time. So delicate. So crushable. How wrong he had been. Birdlike, indeed. A raptor who’d more than once shredded the skin of his back and buttocks, and his manuscripts. Memory stirred what little libido Alfonse still retained. A valiant twitch rather than the sharp salute of his youth, but something.

  “He can rest when he’s dead, Judith,” Olivia grumbled. “Carpe diem! What he has left, at any rate.”

  Judi glared. “Will you have dinner in the dining room this evening, then? Are you permitted?”

  “They can’t keep him locked up against his will. Of course he’ll have dinner with us. Won’t you, Alfie?”

  “Are they always like this?” Alfonse asked Switch.

  Switch grinned. He rubbed the back of his neck. Nodded. Winked. Darling Switch. Brilliant writer. Exquisite and inventive. Not even in their wild youth had his tongue obeyed those eloquent words inside his head.